Sir Roper Lethbridge Obituary - 1919

Eliza Lady Lethbridge

[Society Note: Following an enquiry by a Devonshire visitor to the Society's web-site, we confirmed the eventual burial place for Sir Roper Lethbridge. The obituary also gave a date for Eliza's death - 1895 (Saturday 29th December 1895, daughter of Mr W Finlay; Married 1865 - the Times obituary was very small). Her headstone carries no date.]

OBITUARY FOR SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGE – Reported in The Times on 17th February 1919.

"Sir Roper Lethbridge, K.C.I.E., died at Exbourne, on Saturday, at the age of 79. He was born in Devonshire, educated at Plymouth and Mannamead College, and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated in double classical and mathematical honours. On leaving Oxford be was appointed the Government Professor of Political Economy in the State Colleges of the Calcutta University. He became secretary of the Simla Education Committee in, 1877, was created C.I.E. in 1878, and was Indian Political Agent in 1878. He wrote a number of works on Indian education and made a particular study of Imperial Preference as it affected India. As long ago as 1879 or 1880 he contributed special articles on Indian subjects to The Times - e.g., on the sending of Indian troops to Malta by Disraeli, the Afghan Frontier, and the Indian Vernacular Press Act of 1878, under which he had been appointed Indian Press Commissioner. In 1874, while still in the Indian service, he was appointed by The Times to be its Calcutta Correspondent in succession to Dr. George Smith, but was not permitted by the Government to take up the appointment. He was a founder and one of the original committee of the Imperial Federation League.

On leaving India Sir Roper Lethbridge turned his attention to English politics. He was Conservative candidate for Whitby In 1884, and the next year found a seat at North Kensington, from which he retired in 1892. His country seat was Exbourne Manor, In Devonshire, and he took a keen interest in county questions, being president of the Devonshire Association for 1901, a member of the Exeter Diocesan Board of Education, and vice-president of the Okehampton Agricultural Society. He was vice-president of the Tariff Reform League.

Sir Roper Lethbridge was twice married, his first wife, who died in 1895, being the granddaughter of the eleventh Lord Teynham. In 1897 he married the widow of the late Frederick Burbidge, of Micklefield, Herts."